An Object At Rest Tends To Stay At Rest

I wonder where I should attend church.

And I wonder this frequently although I do attend a church: the same Methodist church my husband and I have attended for many, many years now.   We attend regular services and holiday services; we have attended small groups and Bible studies; we have volunteered to serve at events and church organizations.

In spite of all of this effort and energy, somehow, we remain alien in the community, and the community remains alien to us.

It’s not that people don’t care; they do, in particular ways.  They welcome us warmly, they try to keep track of prayer requests, they make us feel like we belong when we’re there.  It’s just that relationships only seem to exist within that nebulous church context: within the confines of a small group meeting or in texts or emails about it, within Sunday services or a church dinner, never outside any of these places and never ever in any depth.

Meanwhile, I long for community.

None of my fellow congregants really know what I do for a living, what I’m struggling with right now, any of the major events in our lives.  I received condolences when my mother died and caring words—again, at church events—but no one checked in beyond that.  When my husband had heart palpitations and we went on an arduous journey to determine the cause, I didn’t even bother asking for prayer or any form of support, expecting more of the same.

Somehow, I’m closer to my atheist and interfaith colleagues at work than I am to the people in my own church. How does this even happen?

I’ve wondered if it is a me problem.  Perhaps, I think often, the issue is my childlessness and living away from our family of origin.  People locally all seem to have children, and grandparents and great-grandparents about—family connections to the area, to others.  They’re busy with their own clans, with school groups and kid networks, and maybe there’s simply nowhere for a transplant to this area to fit. My husband and I come in lacking a common ground, and there are no schools or teachers or kids’ sports to discuss.

A local church acquaintance recently hinted as much.  When I tentatively inquired about why, you know, people didn’t really seem to develop relationships of any sort outside of the church, she laughed.  “We’re parents!  We all have families and stuff, you know—our time is limited.  So the relationship-building really happens when we all get together here, right?  That’s why we have these events.”

So: be thankful for what we offer, because the local church community has limits.

Except, strangely, my church is the only place I run into this problem.  I have strong local connection elsewhere, relationships with people I never knew before built on commonalities and slow introductions and “let’s have coffee” friendships that turned into something far more significant.  I wonder why it’s that way here, in church,when—at least to my mind—cultivating relationships should be integral to who we are in Christ.

But, honestly, community is only one of several struggles.

More and more, the sermons at my church are based more often than I’d like off Christian TV shows or movies—right now we’re in a Chosen study period, with Bible studies and Sunday themes and who knows what else spinning off the show episodes.  An emphasis on marketing, branding, and tech leaves me cold and contribute to a strangely impersonal feel.  The church has held no less than six “capital campaigns” to raise money within the past two years – all for highly non-essential items , each more extravagant than the last and with the pleas taking up more and more of each service.

You might, at this point, suggest we go elsewhere.

Well, we’ve tried.  And there’s the rub.  Many of the Protestant churches in our area face the same struggles and issues.  Indeed, at least ten churches in our local area now seem completely indistinguishable from each other: all of them running similar branded studies that lead into branded sermons with branded events and community engagement portfolios.  All of them with the same approach to community.  All of them opening branches hither and yon, sending around traveling worship teams and drama teams to keep Sundays entertaining.

We tried to make our break during and just after the pandemic.  It had become clear to us over that period that we longed for liturgy, tradition, a return to more ancient rhythms of church.  We wanted away from away from TV-branded sermons and overstimulating PowerPoints and chaotic “sensory experience” Good Friday services. Liturgy sounded like a balm to the soul.

Except, you know, theology and doctrine matter.  Practical affairs like driving distance matters.  And in our experiments to see what was available it became apparent we don’t quite fit anywhere, that anywhere we go we seem bound to compromise something: if not relationships, Scriptural depth, if not Scriptural depth, doctrinal and theological alignment, if not doctrinal and theological alignment, location.

So we find ourselves faced with a series of bewildering questions, like:

• Do we tolerate doctrine and theology with which we’re partially (even if not wholly) unaligned, choosing to keep our own council and letting God guide us in discernment, if everything else feels right?
• Do we tolerate a continued lack of community and engagement so that we can feel doctrinally sound?
• Do we shrug and say “eh” and just stay where we are?
• Do we drive 45 minutes out of the way to the one church that feels right in every way, but whose distance means we’ll likely engage much less?
•  Do we keep waiting and praying, now over five years into seeking, for God to confirm with certainty where we ought to go?

I wonder.  I wonder all these things. 

In the meantime, I find myself making my own “church community” not at my actual church but with a motley crew of believers I have come to know through various other means.  We don’t “assemble ourselves together,” but we pray for each other and think of each other and lift each other.  I ask myself is I should satisfy myself here, and let all else go. The church is imperfect, after all. I should be seeking fulfillment only from God, after all.

Mostly, though, I keep praying and waiting.

Post-pandemic, my husband and I reached out to our local Catholic parish for an RCIA contact.  I’ve written about this experience in more oblique terms before, but during the dark days of the pandemic I was buoyed, uplifted, and encouraged by many, many Catholics that God simultaneously brought into my life for that season.  Moved by their love, wisdom, and compassion, we learned a lot about the Catholic faith over that period and wondered if we ought to journey in that direction. 

We found the RCIA contact at the parish to be incredibly kind and warm, demystifying some of the myths around the church and taking us on a brief tour. He explained the typical Catholic mass, some of the theology, shared what his faith meant to him.  He introduced us to a great many people who happened to be at the church for an event.  And he was not afraid of acknowledging or answering much of what emerged from our deeply Protestant context.

At the end of the night, he asked if we’d be interested in committing to RCIA. 

We both paused.  Substantial doctrinal differences weighed heavy on our hearts, and—as I explained to him, awkwardly, “I think my problem is that I’d want to be a really good Catholic, you know?  I’d want to be in alignment with everything, to feel that I’m in agreement with everything the church teaches.  And right now, I mean, I’m not sure I can or I am, and I guess I feel like—it’s probably better not to be a Catholic at all, than to be one and only half-in.”

I was worried he’d be offended that we wasted his time.  Instead, he thanked us for coming, warm as ever.  And as he walked to the door, he made a comment I have been turning over in my heart ever since: “Don’t worry about it.  If God wants you to be here, nothing anyone can do will keep you away.  And if God wants you elsewhere, nothing anyone can do will keep you here.” 

I ponder, often, where God wants us to be.

Right now, we remain where we are.  We pray and seek and hope.  We pause for Him to reveal what might move us. And, rather than focus on what I miss in my own church community, I do what I can to build it where I am as I wait for next steps to be revealed.